Combat Ops

“That’s fine. You can wait for us.”

“No, I’m coming on this mission.”

“Negative. I need you to return to the FOB, and bring your driver along.”

“Excuse me? I’m here to relieve you.”

“I am not relieved.”

“You’ve got no authority to refuse me.” He glanced around at my team. “Captain Mitchell has been relieved of command and will be returning to the base with my driver.”

“Guys, just ignore him. I’m in command. Prepare to move out.”

“Scott—”

Now I was talking through my teeth. “You listen to me, and you listen good. Each one of my guys has got two rifles. One’s their favorite toy. The other’s an AK confiscated from the Taliban. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“That I could accidentally get shot? You gotta be kidding me. You don’t threaten me with that. We’re on the same team, and you just need to suck it up. I’m in. You’re out.”

He told the private to hold his position and wait for us.

Ramirez whispered to me, “The hell with it. Let him come. We can babysit. He could get hurt…”

I lay there, panting. If I abandoned the mission, I’d still go home to be hung. So the hell with it. We were going.

Biting back a curse, I got to my feet. “Guys, you will ignore any and all commands from Captain Warris. Moving up. Let’s roll.”

I looked at Warris. “What’re you going to do now, Freddy? Phone a friend?”

“No, I’m still coming along. I’ll document all this insubordination, and by the time I’m done, you and this entire team will go down.”

Then he told me to fuck myself and broke off with Jenkins, Hume, and Brown, our Bravo team. I took Ramirez, Nolan, Smith, and Treehorn. I put Treehorn on point. Bravo shifted off to the north side. I told them to activate their Cross-Coms and to watch what they said — we were being recorded.

Ramirez looked back at me, as if to say: Oh my God, what’s happening now…

I just steeled my gaze and got back on the horn. “Brown, this is Ghost Lead, over.”

“Here, Ghost Lead,” he said, as I patched into his Cross-Com’s camera and watched them scurrying along the foothill, climbing higher along a lip of gravel and dirt.

“Stay in touch.”

“Roger that.”

Warris didn’t know it, but Brown was in command of that team. He would be reporting to me, and I knew that Hume and Smith would fall in line.

Ramirez hadn’t lied. The military might have been full of backstabbers and ass-kissers, but my men were fiercely loyal — every last one of them. They would do anything for me. I mean anything.

I kept close to Treehorn as we ascended, hunched over, our computers scanning the mountainside for enemies. Clear so far. We climbed for another fifteen minutes, making good progress, when Treehorn called for a halt, and I zoomed in with my camera to see the ragged depression in the mountain, like a bruise against the stone.

“Cave entrance, right there,” reported Treehorn.

“We got one, too,” said Brown.

“I’ll report that,” cried Warris. “We’ve got a tunnel entrance. Can’t get a good read on it, but I’m guessing it runs deep. Could connect to your entrance, over.”

“Roger that. If we get in too deep, we might lose contact with the satellite.”

“Understood. Recording. Let’s do it.”

I hadn’t mentioned anything to Warris about our Cross-Coms’ being knocked out during our first night raid, but I’d assumed he’d read it in my report. I wondered if being inside the tunnel would protect the gear from whatever the Taliban was using against us.

The answer would come shortly.

As in the second we entered the caves.

It all went dead. Again. Everything. High-tech gear reduced to crap.

We’d taken along some old MBITR radios, standardissue stuff as backup, and strangely enough they still worked. Maybe they had thicker casings and were better shielded from EMP waves or other countermeasures.

We had penlights taped to our rifles. Even as I turned mine on, the first wave of gunfire stitched across the mountain. They were coming at us from outside, from above the entrance.

“Move, move, move!” I screamed, driving the group into the tunnel.

Treehorn rushed forward. He hadn’t taken along his sniper’s rifle; instead he had a terrifically loud shotgun, and when it boomed, sending pellets into the face of the Taliban guy rushing toward us, I dropped to one knee and crouched tight to the dusty rock wall at my shoulder.

“Ghost Lead, this is Brown! We are taking fire inside and out, over!”

“Roger that,” I said. “Move in. Flush them out!”

“He’s right,” said Warris. “Let’s move in!”

Like I needed his confirmation.

The tunnel was barely two meters high, about three meters wide, but it grew more narrow as we stepped over the guy Treehorn had shot.

Pops and booms echoed from somewhere deep in the tunnel, telling me that yes, Bravo team’s tunnel was, in fact, connected to ours.

“Look at this,” said Ramirez, crouching down beside the dead guy. In the dirt lay an odd-looking rifle with a funnel-like barrel.

“I know what that is,” said Nolan. “HERF gun for sure. Like EMP. High-energy radio frequency. Just what I thought. Works better in close quarters. They must’ve been very close when they zapped us the first time.”

“But look at this thing. Seems homemade,” said Ramirez, lifting the gun up to his penlight.

“They didn’t make ’em up here, or even in the town,” I said. “Somebody’s supplying them — somebody who knows they’d need them. Like the CIA. Pack up that gun. Let’s go!”

Ramirez shoved the gun in his backpack, and we began to work our way along a curve that dropped sharply. I had to hang on to the wall to prevent sliding forward for a few meters.

Ramirez was pulling up the rear now, keeping his rifle pointed back while shuffling to keep up with us, the thin beams of our penlights playing like lasers over the walls.

Treehorn remained up front, ready to blast the hell out of anyone who tried to confront us. He stole a quick glance back at me, and I’d never seen his eyes as wide. The sergeant was wired to the moment, and I had every confidence in him.

“Mitchell, this is Warris. We dropped two tangos. Picked up a gun of some sort. EMP, over.”

“Same here,” I answered. “Keep moving in, but call out if you see our lights.”

“Roger that.”

I noticed how Warris wouldn’t refer to me as “Ghost Lead.” What a fool… I wondered why he hadn’t called Harruck to “tell on me” yet. Then I thought, he’s just a kid and wants a little action, that’s why he’s delaying the call. What a bigger fool!

And then, before he could say contemplate anything else, Ramirez opened fire behind us. We hit the dirt, and I whirled back, along with Nolan, to add our fire and drive back a pair of fighters who vanished behind the curve.

“Keep moving!” I ordered.

“They’re still back there,” warned Ramirez.

“That’s why you keep watching,” I said.

The air grew dank as we descended even farther. Trash appeared along the walls — discarded wrappers, even some bottles of soda, along with MREs, which had obviously been stolen from U.S. and coalition forces.

“Looks like an intersection coming up,” said Treehorn. “Two tunnels.”

“Warris, do you see us?”